June 15, 2006

Well, Breyer seems to be doing a Larry David imitation. But everybody else.

The event was a tribute to the late Chief Justice Rehnquist. Revelations:

Rehnquist, who often wore Hush Puppies with business suits, was the only person [his former clerk John] Roberts said he'd ever seen get down on his stomach to line up a shot in croquet.

A trivia buff, tennis player and friendly gambler, Rehnquist loved history and geography and liked to bet on how much snow would fall....

Maureen Mahoney, one of the most frequent practitioners before the high court, said Rehnquist was not the sexist conservative that some groups painted him after President Reagan nominated him to be chief justice....

Mahoney recalled that Rehnquist told an interviewer how his wife, Nan, reacted when she learned of his nomination to be chief justice. "She replied, 'Put the dishes in the dishwasher.'"

"I don't know anything on the topic, but I had been rooting for Maureen Mahoney, when Miers was picked. Alito looks good, but I thought she was a Roberts by a different gender."

Mahoney is a very good lawyer, but I'm not sure I agree that one should put a lawyer directly onto SCOTUS, since the two jobs require very different (and often incompatible) mindsets. Moreover, she suffered from much the same problem as Miers: the lack of a paper trail, the lack of any concrete judicial philosophy, and so on. Being a good lawyer - or even being a great and outstanding lawyer - may be a necessary qualification for the Supreme Court, but it is not sufficient.

Personally, I had hoped (and have high hopes) for Diane Sykes, who continues to do sterling work on the Seventh Circuit; my first preference to replace O'Connor was Alito from the day she stepped down, and I was thus not happy with the choice of Roberts. I'm ready to eat crow at this point and admit that I did not adequately appreciate at the time that while I still wouldn't have picked Roberts to replace O'Connor, he is a superb choice for the Chief Justiceship. I still have concerns about his jurisprudential philosophy, but I recognize that the Chief can't be the bomb thrower, and the man couldn't have been more born to lead if he'd come out of the womb with a saddle and a map of Europe.